Detroit Historical Society

We’re Moving to the Brand New Detroit Historical Society Blog

Thank you for following us on this platform. Don’t worry—our backlog of posts has been carried over.  Visit our main website for new posts at https://detroithistorical.org/blog. Among the brand new posts added to our new page are: The First State In and the First State Out The J.L. Hudson Department Store Collection The Society’s Most Requested Images Haunted History: The Crow New posts are…

Know Your Hats: A Quick History of Men’s Hats 1790 to Present

The Detroit Historical Society Collection is home to approximately 1,800 hats: Men’s, women’s, children’s, winter, summer, military, formal, casual, etc. These function as a critical part of the larger Costume and Textile collection which, at 20,000 artifacts strong, is the single largest grouping of objects in our holdings. A good chunk of the 1,800 hats were sold from Detroit department stores…

Pandemic: Detroit’s Deadly History

The latest virulent health threat affecting our world seems new to most of us. The Ebola, SARS and MERS outbreaks were recent, but distant. Flu scares never cut this deep. So, in our collective memory, the mass closure of all public spaces is unique. “Novel” you might say.

Among Detroit’s many, many stories there are tragic tales of devastating epidemics, mass self-isolation, unintended…

Lions, Bears, the Red Grange Trophy, and a Thanksgiving Football Mystery

This time of year the Detroit-centric internet is full of Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Game facts.

Here are some more:

The first Thanksgiving Day football game for a professional Detroit team was in 1934 against the Chicago Bears. “Professional” is the key word here as the University of Detroit had been playing games on Thanksgiving no later than 1919.

While the Dallas Cowboys have also…

June 11th marks the anniversary of the Great Fire of 1805--a blaze that consumed most of Detroit’s buildings.  The diorama pictured on this postcard was originally installed in the downtown Hudson’s location, along with 13 other scenes, to commemorate Detroit’s 250th anniversary in 1951.  After their initial display period, Hudson’s donated the dioramas to the Detroit Historical Museum.

On April 10, 1922, the Detroit Fire Department made a ceremonial final run of it’s horse-drawn fire apparatuses along Woodward Avenue.  Several of the older engines and hose carts, followed by modern trucks, made their way through downtown along Woodward where they were met by the firefighters’ band at the Michigan Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument.  The parade lasted a brisk 5 minutes.

Ned, a 14 year veteran, was the most senior member of the department’s four-legged contingent, and was recognized with a special sign during the parade.  After the run, he, along with the rest of his team retired to greener pastures on Belle Isle.

On April 8, 1956, the Department of Street Railways ran its final streetcars along the last remaining line in the city--Woodward Avenue.  The D.S.R. had been gradually converting its lines to bus service beginning in the late 1930s.  The top photo shows a PCC-style streetcar on that final day of service, near Moss Street in Highland Park.  The sign on the car’s side reads, “The Last Streetcars Operating in Detroit.. Welcome New Woodward Buses.”  The bottom photo of the Detroit Historical Museum was snapped from the window of the final streetcar as it passed.

Regular streetcar service returned to Woodward Avenue with the opening of the QLine in 2017.

Photographer Carla Anderson captured these group portraits of children in southwestern Detroit during her involvement in the Documenting Detroit project, c. 1975.

The steel frame of the Durant Building (re-dubbed the General Motors Building shortly after its completion, and currently known as Cadillac Place) rises above New Center in this c. 1920 photo.  The factory in the middle-ground on the left is that of the Cadillac Motor Car Company.

This dramatic night time view of the Detroit Edison Conners Creek electric power plant is dated March 29, 1954  The plant’s two distinctive clusters of smokestacks were a local landmark along the city’s eastern riverfront, and were nicknamed the Seven Sisters and the Two Brothers.  In 1996 the Seven Sisters were demolished.

Elizabeth O’Sullivan and the 1935 Detroit Tigers

“Take me Out to the Ball Game” Lyrics by Jack Norworth, 1908

Even people who can sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” in their sleep might not know that the song is about Katie Casey, a girl who was “baseball mad” and would rather go to a game with her beau than out on the town Saturday night.

Elizabeth O’ Sullivan was Detroit’s answer to Katie Casey.

A new addition to the DHS collection is a…

You may be familiar with the annual Belle Isle Ice Tree that appears each winter on the northern side of the island.  The tradition actually has roots that go back to downtown Detroit in 1900.  It began on the median of Washington Boulevard, at Michigan Avenue, where the rocky fountain installed on that site would be allowed to run all winter long, producing a tower of ice.  On particularly chilly years, the fountain was said to have grown as tall as 60 feet!

Sometime before the 1930s, the practice has moved to Belle Isle.  The initial location on the island was a spot to the west of the Belle Isle Bridge, however soon after it was moved to the vicinity of Vista Drive--the location of the modern Ice Tree.

The practice was so popular as to inspire a similar effort in Evergreen Cemetery beginning in 1925.